Recent years have seen the rise of computer-mediated technologies that allow the creating and sharing of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks, such as social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc., Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter Inc., LinkedIn is a registered trademark of LinkedIn Corporation). Many of these virtual communities and networks allow users to post textual statements, pictures, videos, and links to other websites, such as news articles. These posts can be re-shared, re-tweeted, and so forth, by other users of the virtual community. Some posts may become very popular, receiving a high number of likes or similar endorsements from other users and being re-shared many times. Such posts are sometimes described as “going viral.”
The popularity of virtual communities and networks has also resulted in advertisers and other parties using these platforms to disseminate related content and other information to individual users. Algorithms to determine what content would be of most interest to an individual user and to select content to present to that user can be used to direct or target messages to a particular user most likely to positively respond to the messages. Directed or targeted messages can be used for advertisements, news stories, or any other content that a party wants to push to a user of the virtual community. Often, such parties desire to maximize user views or “clicks” on their content.